Mira Sorvino has suggested that she would have had a “bigger” Hollywood career if she hadn’t been “blacklisted” by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein.
“I was blacklisted for 20 years,” Sorvino alleged on the Wednesday, March 18, episode of Sophia Bush’s “Work in Progress” podcast. “I didn’t do a studio movie for 20 years.”
Sorvino was a budding superstar in the late 1990s, having won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1995’s Mighty Aphrodite. While she followed up her Oscar win with appearances in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and Mimic, Sorvino told Bush that she paid a price for turning down Weinstein’s advances.
“I actually turned Harvey down three times and when I’d spoken to Ronan Farrow [for a New Yorker article in 2017], I’d forgotten about the third time,” she clarified. “It only came to mind later. It was right after the third time that [Harvey] put the kibosh on my career and blacklisted me for 20 years.”
Sorvino was one of more than 80 women to come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against Weinstein in 2017. She told the New Yorker that Weinstein actively sabotaged her career when she rejected his advances multiple times in the 1990s.
Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson supported Sorvino’s accusations, telling Stuff.co.nz in December 2017 that executives at Weinstein’s company Miramax told him Sorvino and Ashley Judd — who also accused the producer of misconduct — were “a nightmare to work with and we should avoid them at all costs.” (Weinstein has denied blacklisting Sorvino and Judd.)
“At the time, we had no reason to question what these guys were telling us,” Jackson, 64, recalled. “I now suspect we were fed false information about both of these talented women — and as a direct result their names were removed from our casting list.”
In her new interview with Bush, Sorvino revealed that she’d only landed roles in two big-budget Hollywood movies after the #MeToo movement.
“I still worked … I did indies and I did television,” she said. “I could have had a bigger
career on television probably, but I have four kids and I really wanted to be present there for them.”
Sorvino also offered her support for the victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in the wake of the release of the Epstein Files. (Epstein died by suicide at age 66 in 2019 after being arrested on federal sex crimes charges.)
“There’s a second wave of that sorrow and broken-heartedness right now because of the Epstein Files,” the actress said. “And I think we all feel such sorrow for all the victims, living and dead, of this horrendous, horrendous culture of abuse and absolute lack of morality and lawlessness and disgusting and predatory [behavior].”
Weinstein is set to face trial for a third time in New York City later this year on separate charges of sexual assault. His original conviction in New York was overturned on appeal in 2024 and a second trial ended with a deadlocked jury on the alleged third-degree rape of actress Jessica Mann. (Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.)
Aside from his New York case, Weinstein was convicted of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by a foreign object over separate allegations in Los Angeles in 2022.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
